Cont: House Impeachment Inquiry - part 2

[Babbylonian]

Some of the half who say he should be removed from office are lying, just giving the answer they think the pollster wants, want to appear to give the "right" answer or some combination.

IMO a significant minority of that 50% will still vote for the GOP Presidential candidate in 2020, even if that candidate is President Trump.

Your statement here doesn't make a lot of sense given that Trump didn't win the popular vote when he was elected.

 

[The Don]

Your statement here doesn't make a lot of sense given that Trump didn't win the popular vote when he was elected.

Why not ?

I'd also think that some people who think that President Trump should not be impeached will vote against him.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

There is no easy quick-fix for the US system.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

You asked me "What data should we be basing our opinions on?" and I replied not poll data, that poll data is unnecessary and useless unless you are the candidate using polls to strategize. As a voter your function isn't to plan the campaign, but to vote. One time per election. Instead of basing your vote on polling data you should base it on your own opinion of who is best for the job.

You seem unable to grasp the above, because you then said "Unless your argument is that it's literally impossible to have any indication of how an election might go and therefore the only reasonable approach is for everybody to treat every possibility as equally probable, then you presumably feel that the acquisition of data is possible. It seems that you don't believe polls can fulfil that function, so I'm curious as to what you feel is. "

To which I replied asking why you need to have an indication of how an election might go. Your task is still a vote, not to run the candidate's campaign for them. You still don't need polling data to decide which candidate to vote for.

Unless your criterion for voting for a candidate is to vote for the candidate that the most other people are voting for, in which case you may as well not vote at all. It would be the same result.

This is a lot of words to type just to agree with me that you haven't addressed what I said, what I think, or the questions you were asked.

 

[Belz...]

If we can't trust the polls that doesn't automatically make what essentially amounts to gut feeling faith that everything is just going to work out in the end right.

It's not unlike the thought that since science can't explain everything, therefore God exists.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Just Security are reporting that they have seen unredacted White House emails

It's clear that the redactions were not made for reasons of national security, but in order to cover arses, and that the Office of Management and Budget lied in official correspondence to the General Accountability Office that they had not been warned by the Pentagon that withholding the budget would see them unable to provide all the aid that had been authorised, when they had actually been warned repeatedly for months of exactly that.

 

[Ziggurat]

It was configured to do the job it does at a time when slaves were a) legal and b) were considered 3/5 of a person.

Slaves were never considered 3/5ths of a person. First off, the 3/5ths had nothing to do with personhood of the individual. It was purely a calculating device for figuring out House representation. Second, it was slave states who wanted slaves counted fully, and free states that wanted slaves not counted at all. Does that mean that slave owners considered slaves as full people and abolitionists considered slaves as not people? Well, no, obviously. How different people wanted slaves counted for House allocation purposes has at best an inverse relationship to whatever personhood they may have ascribed to those slaves.

This is a stupid and ahistorical argument, and the people who make it have bought into a lie.

The job it was intended to do was to appease slave-holding states. I don't consider that either noble or worth defending in modern times.

No. The electoral college was intended to serve multiple purposes. One of those purposes no longer applies, since there are no slave-holding states anymore. That doesn't moot any of the other purposes it serves.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Slaves were never considered 3/5ths of a person. First off, the 3/5ths had nothing to do with personhood of the individual.

"Black people were never considered 3/5ths of a person, they were just counted by the government for official reasons as 3/5ths of a person."

*Slow clap* Stunning. Simply stunning.

 

[plague311]

Slaves were never considered 3/5ths of a person. First off, the 3/5ths had nothing to do with personhood of the individual. It was purely a calculating device for figuring out House representation. Second, it was slave states who wanted slaves counted fully, and free states that wanted slaves not counted at all. Does that mean that slave owners considered slaves as full people and abolitionists considered slaves as not people? Well, no, obviously. How different people wanted slaves counted for House allocation purposes has at best an inverse relationship to whatever personhood they may have ascribed to those slaves.

This is a stupid and ahistorical argument, and the people who make it have bought into a lie.

No. The electoral college was intended to serve multiple purposes. One of those purposes no longer applies, since there are no slave-holding states anymore. That doesn't moot any of the other purposes it serves.

Wouldn't slave states want more people to be counted so that they could have more representation in congress? Legitimate question so I don't need any degrading snark about how I should learn things or whatever.

It just seems that if you got more representation by having more people, and you wanted a bigger voice in congress, the way to do that would be to count as many people as possible. Especially when those people are, literally, under your control. The free states probably didn't want slaves counted at all because they didn't want there to be slaves? Am I not understanding this properly?

 

[plague311]

Per Newsweek:

More American adults believe the U.S. Senate should remove President Donald Trump from office than those who think it should not, according to a poll.

The Economist/YouGov survey found that 45 percent of people think the Senate should remove Trump from office against 41 percent who said it should not. 14 percent were not sure.

It was dated 12/28-12/31 so fairly hot off the press. I wonder if the increase is due to the way Trump is acting, or the fact that he's pushing so hard to keep witnesses from testifying. Either way, I hope support continues to rise the closer we get to election time.

 

[Mike!]

Per Newsweek:



It was dated 12/28-12/31 so fairly hot off the press. I wonder if the increase is due to the way Trump is acting, or the fact that he's pushing so hard to keep witnesses from testifying. Either way, I hope support continues to rise the closer we get to election time.

It's still less than half ether way, so the word "more" is a bit misleading at best.

 

[Segnosaur]

I really don't understand why people say impeachment is handing Trump 2020 on a silver platter. Half of Americans believe Trump should be removed from office before his trial in the Senate. When the Trumptrash in the Senate fail to do their duty to their nation, it's not as if that fifty percent is going to say, "Oh well I guess he shouldn't be removed".

Well, there are both benefits and risks to impeaching. While impeaching may be the right thing to do (in both a legal/moral and tactical sense) there are risks:

- Impeaching in the house but failing to convict in the senate may make the Democrats seem weak/ineffectual, thus turning off potential voters (i.e. "Why vote at all if they can't get rid of a crook?")

- It risks galvanizing Trump supporters... either encouraging potential fence-sitters to "Get out and vote or the evil Democrats will launch a coup" or as a fundraising tactic (Supposedly donations to Trump and the Republicans have increased since the start of the Impeachment proceedings. Now, I assume that donations would have increased anyways, given the fact that we are approaching an election, but I can certainly envision it being used as advertising fodder... "give to us or the Democrat's coup will be complete".)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/02/poli...ampaign-fundraising-fourth-quarter/index.html

That said, I do not think impeaching was a bad thing. I think there are numerous benefits. But the situation is complex, and I do think that we should at least acknowledge the risks.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Per Newsweek:



It was dated 12/28-12/31 so fairly hot off the press. I wonder if the increase is due to the way Trump is acting, or the fact that he's pushing so hard to keep witnesses from testifying. Either way, I hope support continues to rise the closer we get to election time.

Seems pretty clear to me that Senate Republicans will not impeach under any foreseeable circumstances. Sure, they'd like to minimize the damage by hiding as much evidence of wrongdoing as possible, but they'd still acquit even if the most damning facts became public.

The broad strokes of the scandal are generally understood. More evidence isn't really going to change that. A large portion of the country knows that Trump did it and don't care.

 

[theprestige]

Wouldn't slave states want more people to be counted so that they could have more representation in congress? Legitimate question so I don't need any degrading snark about how I should learn things or whatever.

Yes. The slave states wanted the full number of their slaves to be counted in their population, so that they would have more representation in the federal government, even though their slaves could not vote for representatives.

The free states wanted none of the number of slaves to be counted in a slave state's population.

The compromise, in order to establish the union (this, not abolition, being the goal of the exercise), was to count 3/5 of the slave states' slave populations.

 

[plague311]

Seems pretty clear to me that Senate Republicans will not impeach under any foreseeable circumstances. Sure, they'd like to minimize the damage by hiding as much evidence of wrongdoing as possible, but they'd still acquit even if the most damning facts became public.

The broad strokes of the scandal are generally understood. More evidence isn't really going to change that. A large portion of the country knows that Trump did it and don't care.

I believe that to be true but I still believe that at least a good portion of the voting bloc in America would be swayed if truly damaging material were to come out. I believe enough evidence is available right now for impeachment (and to a non-Trump supporter is certainly damaging), and that he should be impeached and removed. That being said, given that no one from Trump's trusted circle has testified, I still believe a Bolton, or someone of that level, testifying would be damaging. It's pathetic, but most of the US population runs off of name recognition. Most of the names to testify against Trump are unknowns but an insider that Trump trusted would be a bit tough to explain away as a Never Trumper. It would also give the Dems to say, "Even if he is a Never Trumper, he didn't start that way. It was working with you that turned him that way, so what does that say about you?"

*snipped for brevity*

Ok, maybe I wasn't understanding it properly. I thought the claim was not wanting the slaves to be counted was racism, but it sounds strategic. Going back and reading it I think I understand it more clearly now. Thanks.

 

[Ziggurat]

Wouldn't slave states want more people to be counted so that they could have more representation in congress? Legitimate question so I don't need any degrading snark about how I should learn things or whatever.

Yes, you understand correctly, and that's precisely my point. Slave states (and slave owners) wanted them counted fully. Non-slave states (and abolitionists) didn't want them counted at all. 3/5ths was a compromise between the two, but the less they were counted, the weaker the institution of slavery would be. So reducing that number below 1 wasn't a sign of disrespecting slaves. In a better world they wouldn't have been counted at all, because that might have helped end slavery even earlier.

 

[Ziggurat]

"Black people were never considered 3/5ths of a person, they were just counted by the government for official reasons as 3/5ths of a person."

*Slow clap* Stunning. Simply stunning.

Would you have preferred that they be counted fully? Because counting slaves fully for the census is a pro-slavery position. I'm assuming that you're not actually in favor of slavery, and are simply ignorant. *Slow clap* indeed.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Would you have preferred that they be counted fully? Because counting slaves fully for the census is a pro-slavery position. I'm assuming that you're not actually in favor of slavery, and are simply ignorant. *Slow clap* indeed.

Who exactly do you think you're fooling with your pathetic gotchas?

The fact that pro-slavery side was that one, in that point in time, on the "Count them as full people so we can still get the extra Senators even though we still want them to be slaves and not human" changes what exactly about your lie that "Black people were never considered 3/5ths of a person?"

 

[Ziggurat]

Who exactly do you think you're fooling with your pathetic gotchas?

The fact that pro-slavery side was that one, in that point in time, on the "Count them as full people so we can still get the extra Senators" changes what about your lie that "Black people were never considered 3/5ths of a person?"

It's not a lie, it's the truth. That number doesn't represent anyone's belief about what slaves were, it is only a compromise for how to allocate House seats. Some people thought slaves were whole people, some people thought slaves weren't people at all, but neither of those positions are reflected in the 3/5ths compromise.

 

[plague311]

It's not a lie, it's the truth. That number doesn't represent anyone's belief about what slaves were, it is only a compromise for how to allocate House seats. Some people thought slaves were whole people, some people thought slaves weren't people at all, but neither of those positions are reflected in the 3/5ths compromise.

Isn't that a little contradictory?